Protect Florida’s Sunshine Law

In Sunday’s Miami Herald, we learned about the looming appointment of Florida’s constitutionally required Constitutional Revision Commission, which naturally will be controlled by the overwhelming Republican majority in both houses of Florida’s Legislature and the Governor’s Office.

Citizens like my wife and I worked countless hours collecting the thousands of signatures needed to get the Fair Districts amendment on the ballot, and in spite of the Republican Legislature’s resistance, including all the way to the Florida Supreme Court, it passed with more than 60 percent of the voters’ support.

All of that tireless effort on this and similar citizens’ initiatives will now be lost, as they revert to an era of government in secrecy.

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Re Fabiola Santiago’s Dec. 14 column, “The ethics of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and his lobbyist sons stink,” about my sons and my ethics: First, my son Carlos J. (C.J.) does not lobby Miami-Dade County government. He is a lawyer who was working in the government legal affairs field before I was elected mayor in 2011.

Yet he has not been active in any county business. Santiago initially included him as an active lobbyist in the online version of her column, then when advised that he is listed as “not active lobbyist” — as posted on the county website — she did not include the date of Jan. 27, 2011 that is listed as the last “inactive.”